


Cold Hard Want

by audreycritter



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: DC Rebirth, F/M, Family Bonding, Gen, Horses, Mention of Canonical Death, Philosophical questions, comic follow-up, fictional canonical countries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-13 20:58:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13578819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/pseuds/audreycritter
Summary: “Are you happy?”“I...I’m getting there.”A follow-up to DC Rebirth Batman #35, in which Bruce recovers from being stabbed in the back and Damian considers the elusive nature of happiness.





	Cold Hard Want

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DawnsEternalLight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawnsEternalLight/gifts).



> Thank you to jerseydevious and cerusee for read-throughs and feedback. Thank you to tchailla on tumblr for music and food recs. Thank you to dawnseternallight for workshopping this weeks ago when I started it. Title from House of Heroes song “Out My Way.”
> 
> This follows Tom King’s Batman #35 but can possibly be read alone. Feel free to ask for clarification in comments!

The horses would not have survived.

Shimmering heat rose in dissipating waves off the coastal city Shiruta in the far distance. The bleached stone towers and domes glistened in the peach light. They’d made poor time through the blazing sands, stopping only twice to drink water and so Richard could check Father’s field dressing.

Damian’s entire body ached from dehydration and the long ride, but he’d still drifted to sleep with his arms wrapped around Father’s waist for balance. He tried not to lean on him, but woke gradually and then all at once, grimy with sweat and slumped on the broad, steady back.

He blinked, groggy in the hot air. Evening was falling, carried down with the setting sun. The pale pastels of the sky dipped beyond the ridge of the distant western mountains. Above, the expanse was teal blue fading into a gradient of navy, silver dots of stars beginning to spark into sight.

Father was stiffly upright on the horse, swaying gently with the rocking motion of the slow trot that had lulled Damian to sleep. It might have been his imagination but it seemed like the pace was slowing.

The horse stumbled and caught itself; Father tightened reflexively and Damian slid off the chestnut brown back without a second thought. He landed in the soft, burning sand. The others stopped.

“We’re going to kill them if we make them go any further,” Damian said, when Father looked down at him. He was always hard to decipher in the mask.

“Damian, we have to—” Richard drew the horse behind to a halt and it panted, its heavy head hanging.

“He’s right,” Father said. He dismounted slowly, with deliberate motions, and held the reins loose in one gloved hand. He patted the horse’s neck. Damian didn’t like the way the horse’s belly was already drawn up tight. “Cat?”

“I’m alright,” she said, joining Damian on the ground. Her hand was wrapped in a bandage and she, too, was moving with less grace than usual. She stretched. “I could use a break from riding.”

Richard alone was sitting on the mount he’d shared with her, frowning deeply.

“We walk,” Father said.

“That’s ridiculous,” Richard said, his brow creased. “I don’t want to hurt them, either, but you’ve—”

“We walk,” Father repeated, and he began trudging forward. The horse plodded beside him, its flattened ears perking up a few steps in, at the loss of the burden.

Richard urged his horse forward, keeping pace with Father. Selina and Damian trailed side by side, watching carefully.

“Damian,” Richard pled, turning in his saddle.

“They’ll die, Richard,” Damian said forcefully. He already felt a sick coil of reproach in his gut. “It was cruelty to push them as far as we did.”

“Then you should ride at least,” Richard said, looking back to Father. The shadows they cast fell across Damian’s feet as he walked. It was, despite the heat, a relief to walk some. His legs were sore and the stride, even slow, was leeching the hurt from his limbs.

“No,” Father said, his gait precisely even.

Richard sighed. It was sharp and exasperated. He gave the reins a tug and obediently, the horse stopped completely. “Then I’m staying here.”

“No,” Father said. He didn’t slacken, doggedly pressing forward.

“You’re being an _ass_ ,” Richard spat incredulously. “I can’t believe you—yes, actually. I can believe you’d—”

“Dick.” Father ground to a halt, like creaking machinery. “I’m fine for a few hours.”

“Selina, are you just…” Richard trailed off at the expression on Selina’s face, which Damian could only partly see from his angle in the dimming light.

“Selina,” Father said, “is still mad at me about the _last_ horse.”

Selina didn’t refute this, but she did look suddenly guilty—her eyes were wide and bright in the dark.

“Bat. You sure?”

“I’m sure,” Father said, like this settled everything. With finality.

Damian supposed it did, because Richard exhaled hard and irritated once more and then his boots hit the sand and sank a half inch. Damian flinched at the way Richard wouldn’t look him in the face as he stalked by, taking the lead. Father didn’t try to wrest the position from him in the line they made, straggling staggered across the dunes.

His brother’s anger was hot but temporary. Damian could bear it for the animals that had born them so patiently for long, miserable hours. The brief glimpse of gratitude from Selina wasn’t soothing, exactly, but the confusing twist it made in his chest was a good distraction.

“One hour,” Damian called, gauging the distance to the city. They only had to gain the outskirts, where they’d left their Jeep next to Father’s own.

“Two,” Father replied almost immediately.

It took three.

The first hour passed in much the same way— steady walking, the horses at their sides.

The second was slower. Damian couldn’t tell if Richard was intentionally setting a reduced pace in the chilling evening or if he was holding back to match Father.

Halfway through the third, the horses seemed to catch a second wind and sped up. The reins fell from Father’s hand and when Richard dove sideways with a quick motion to catch them, Father spoke.

“Let them go. They can find their way back.”

His voice was so hoarse and weary that it jolted Damian from his hazy reverie, his gaze landing on Richard with a startled scowl as the horses trotted ahead in the direction of the stables on the edge of the city limits. Richard wasn’t looking at him.

Richard was looking at Father, falling in beside him with undisguised worry. He offered an arm and Father gave a tight shake of his head, a refusal. Damian consoled himself with the fact that Father didn’t need to lean on Richard or Selina the way he had coming out of Khadym.

“Bat? You doing okay?” Selina’s voice, rounded with the natural cadence of the Gotham accent she usually hid, was also thick with concern.

“Hn,” was all Father said.

Damian’s belly soured with regret, with a second-guess, as he eyed the horses’ forms shrinking on the horizon. Perhaps he had miscalculated.

There was nothing to do about it now, so he set his jaw and kept walking. He held his exhaustion at bay with a wary alertness, now, watching Father’s every step with hawkish focus. He tried not to think about Mother.

Finally, beneath the dulled cast of moonlight, they could see the rocky outcropping that sheltered the cars beneath the rising bulk of hills that led to mountains. They were not like the soft swells of grass that surrounded the Manor in Gotham, but jagged hills of thin brush and stone.

The sight of the Jeeps darkly glistening put a little more speed in each step and Damian felt like time hinged wildly on the earth around them, swinging from _we’re never going to make it_ to _already there_ in a breathless instant. They were beneath the inverted slope of rock, like ghosts gaining bone and flesh as they stepped from the limbo of endless trudging into solid and quick reality.

Richard threw open the trunk of one Jeep and tossed aside an emergency blanket. There was a case of water bottles buried there in the flooring, uncomfortably warm even for all the precautions to keep them from melting in the heat.

He tossed one at Damian and then tore the cap off a second, shoving it into Father’s hand. Father took a drink without tipping his head, without lifting his chin. If the others had moved back into the bodies of living people, Father was still moving like a puppet of bone and wood and wire.

There was a soft hiss of pain beside him and Damian turned; Selina’s bandaged hand was struggling with the cap of her own bottle and before Damian thought twice about it, he shoved his hand in her direction. She gave him a weary, gentle smile in thanks and let his uninjured fingers make quick work of the safety cap.

Her eyes widened when she drank and Damian followed the line of sight.

Father was leaning on the Jeep, one arm ramrod straight against the hood. He’d torn the cowl off and turned to face them, perhaps unconsciously, and his brow was creased with pain. Even from yards away, Damian could see he was trembling all over.

For the first time in hours, Father was staring directly at him. There was a wild spark in his eyes and his skin was gray like death, no color left in his cheeks.

“Damian?” he said roughly, so low and wounded that Damian froze in shock. Richard looked at them both, Damian could feel it, and swore. Then he stepped between them.

“Bruce? Hey, B. Look at me.” It was the gentle tone they’d all been trained to use with skittish victims. Richard whirled, just long enough to hiss, “Take your hoodie off _now_.”

With the trust of a Robin following his Batman, Damian ripped the fabric off his back without question. It peeled off his chest with a sticky resistance and he realized it was dried blood, a large spot of it on the chest of his thin sweatshirt. It must have come off Father’s seeping field dressing, when Damian fell asleep on his back.

It was almost directly over the scar where…

_Oh._

“B, it’s me. C’mon. Damian’s okay. Bruce.”

Selina snatched the hoodie from Damian’s hands almost as soon as he’d yanked it over his head and Father’s gaze shifted with agonizing slowness to Richard's face. The bleakness clouding him turned into confusion.

“Dick?”

Father was still shivering and he shuddered, hard, as if to rouse himself from a deep and horrid slumber; then he jerked like Pennyworth’s record player needle, skipping over scratched vinyl.

“We need to go,” Selina said, slipping forward so quickly Damian wasn’t sure he’d seen her move until she was already there. Father didn’t react to her beside him, tugging gently on his arm. He didn’t budge. “He’s burning up.”

“Dammit. It’s probably infected,” Richard said with a growl. The two of them spoke to each other like Father wasn’t right there, closing his eyes and holding his whole towering body rigid.

“Bat,” Selina said soft and fast. “We’re at the Jeep.”

Damian checked his t-shirt and deemed it clean enough, swallowed his own memories, and hurried forward when it was clear Father wasn’t moving.

“Father, we must go.”

Rough, warm fingers brushed the side of his face, cupping his chin. “Damian…” It took too long by far for Father to properly focus on him, but when he did, a bit of the wildness seeped away.

“We must go.”

“Damian, are _you_ happy?”

Damian frowned. He’d asked Father that question hours ago, a lifetime across the desert ago. He blinked. Richard, in his peripheral vision, was rifling through the glovebox of the Jeep. Father’s answer, the implicit admission, had haunted him for hours until exhaustion and heat had driven it temporarily from his mind.

The shock of remembering it probably played a part in the fact that he blurted out the first thing he thought in response, about himself.

“Am I supposed to be?”

Father’s hand jerked back as if burned, the ashy pallor of his skin not hiding that he looked for all the world like Damian had slapped him with his open palm. It was not hard to notice the way Richard froze for the span of several heartbeats.

“Of course you are,” Father said in a wounded tone, with a faint whine. Then, he looked to Richard, perhaps for backup.

“Bruce, get in the Jeep,” Richard said. “I’m driving. Damian, shotgun.”

The authority in Richard’s voice seemed to shake Father into full wakefulness. He was aware, though moving now drew his features tight with pain, all his reserves apparently drained.

“The other Jeep?” Damian asked, taking the passenger seat. Selina claimed the seat behind him.

“We can have it towed,” Richard said, starting the engine.

They were on the winding road of packed, dry mud for several minutes on the way to the city before Richard broke the silence.

“We should take him to the hospital.”

“No,” Father rasped. “I just…need sleep.”

Damian twisted in his seat to see Father lying across the back bench, his head pillowed on Selina’s lap. His breathing was ragged, too fast. His fingers trembled.

“The fuck you do,” Richard exclaimed. “If we don’t have Alfred here, we should go.”

“No,” Father said.

“Does the house have supplies?” Selina asked. “For this?”

“Are you kidding?” Richard scoffed bitterly. “Of course it does. He’s always prepared.”

“Plenty…of…”

“Shut up, Bruce,” Richard snapped. “Selina?”

“The house,” she said.

Richard’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, visible even in the shadows of the driver’s seat. His arms, taut with corded muscle, looked as hard as marble—the absence of motion, so unlike Richard, watered Damian’s growing unease. It unfurled in his chest like a plant already rotted.

“I don’t like this,” Richard said tersely.

“Nobody’s asking…you to,” Father answered.

“Bat,” Selina said, with a hint of rebuke. “He’s worried.”

“The hospital?” Richard asked again, hopeful. Damian didn’t know which option he wanted to win out, so he remained quiet, feeling muted by the atmosphere in the speeding Jeep.

“The house,” Selina repeated. “We give it until morning, then, if he’s not better, we go. It’ll be alright, Little Bird.”

For a moment, Damian thought Richard would erupt. Then his shoulders sagged and instead of angry, he looked empty, drained.

“This isn’t on me,” he said. “If we have to explain to Alfred. Or if it gets bad.”

“I know,” Selina said. “It doesn’t need to be.”

Damian thought this was ridiculous as an agreement. Richard would find a way to blame himself regardless, if anything went wrong. So, he decided, nothing could go wrong. He twisted again in his seat and stared at Father’s face until the blue eyes opened and met his own in the dim interior. Father didn’t speak, his labored breathing the only noise in the Jeep’s interior.

“Don’t be foolish,” Damian said sharply, fumbling for anything that would help. It might have not been the right thing to say but it was a good summation of his frustration and if nothing else, he wanted to be heard. If he was heard by the knives of his words rather than pillows, he could accept that for now.

Hours—days ago—he’d been so terrified they’d follow to Khadym only to bring home Father’s body. He’d cried, like a _baby_ in front of Todd and Thomas. That terror had only ebbed when he’d seen Father emerge from the gated, thick walls on his own feet.

Now, the terror clawed relentlessly at his door and threatened to ransack him again, leaving him in tatters. He bit his lip and realized he was still staring at Father, that Father was seeing the brim of tears. They felt like they’d be neon signs on a rainy night, shining and reflective and impossible to miss.

“I won’t be happy if you die,” Damian snarled, like it was a threat, and then he jerked around to slam his back against the seat. He crossed his arms while he faced the windshield, the tears blurring the landscape. He didn’t dare wipe them away or Richard would notice.

This was his fault. If he’d only been paying more attention, if he hadn’t been so sentimental about the horses, it wouldn’t have gotten this bad.

“When we get to the house, I’ll call Alfred myself,” Father said, pushing himself upright with a groan. Damian could hear the movement, could make it out in the rear view mirror. “If he says hospital, then I’ll go.”

“Thank you,” Richard exhaled. “For showing a single shred of common sense for once in your goddamn life. Lie back down.”

“Not on good terms with common sense,” Father wheezed. “Best time I ever ignored it was when I brought you—”

“God help me if you finish that sentence, we _are_ going to the hospital. Damian’s already crying. Lie back down.”

He hadn’t even thought Richard had noticed so it stung to have it just thrown out there like that, almost like ammunition.

“Are you?” Father asked, his voice suddenly even much more quiet. Damian barely heard the question.

“I’m fine,” he said, drying his face with his sleeve. He supposed it didn’t matter much now how secretive he could be.

“Bat,” Selina said. “Rest.”

Father laid back down.

It took them another hour to make it to the house. It was an hour in week of hours, one blending into the next in a long smear of sickly yellow paint. Damian, even with his brief slumber atop the horse, had been awake until his eyes felt gritty. Rather than getting sleepy once more in the Jeep, he was suspended in a fog of manic focus— it was starting to feel like he’d never need to sleep again.

The house was tall and rectangular, artful modern angles along a row of widely spaced similar coastal houses. The beach was the backyard; the front was shrouded by a baked wall of cream brick and an iron gate with a key code. This wasn’t Batman’s safehouse, this was one of Bruce Wayne’s luxury properties, carefully maintained by a rotating staff of well-paid locals.

It made so much sense that Father would keep a house this close to Khadym, despite being barred entry, that even though Damian had never seen it before he had known of it, and the address. It was on a list he’d memorized years ago, of Wayne and Bat properties and cache locations.

Richard punched in the gate code with angry jabs of his finger and the gate swung open on heavy hinges. The waxing moon, rounded and gibbous, floated in the sky directly ahead when he turned to pull alongside the house. The gate swung shut with a _clank_ that resounded through the quiet night, over the tiled courtyard. Five houses down, the darkness was broken by light and distant noise— someone had guests, many of them, and strains of music and laughter carried toward them in lilting measures swelling, then receding, with the breeze.

Security lights clicked on, flooding the yard. Damian gazed around, his expression coached into boredom, while he did a perimeter check for watching eyes or cameras other than their own. It was as natural to him as breathing; the way his attention snapped to Richard next was a reflex. He hunted for the confirming nod, Richard’s half of the all-clear—Richard wasn’t looking.

Father had found an emergency blanket and drawn it around his shoulders. He was already staggering out of the car, steadying himself before taking the steps into the house. Richard was jamming his finger against another keypad, none of his attention on Damian at all.

With the silky silver blanket covering the bat insignia, and the bleached pallor of his sweating skin, Father looked like any other wealthy idiot who had too much to drink and had to be retrieved from his social outing, or maybe one with a delicate heart condition. Perhaps a perimeter check was, then, unnecessary, and this appearance only reinforced their cover. But Richard’s inattention still pricked him like the thorns of a bramble patch, a scratching thing he’d fallen into unaware, and the hurt of it left behind something inside him like rising weals of beading blood.

He glanced down at himself, at his filthy khakis and sweat-stained tee, the windburn across his knuckles and the sand burrowing down into the laces of his boots, and he felt like a stupid little boy. He might have kicked a tire of the Jeep in rage at the feeling, only he was suddenly so tight with tension that he couldn’t move. It was Selina’s voice calling him that jerked him along toward the house, like a marionette with hard knots of wood for fists bobbing on a string. He dipped his shoulder and shoved by her, expecting that she’d slip to the side and let him by, and she did.

It seemed like she might try to put a hand on his shoulder, bend at the waist and talk to him in an attempt to soothe his nerves, to calm him. But she limped by him without a word, or even a glance. Damian yanked at his boots, trying to pull them off without unlacing them. They wouldn’t give and his feet protested at the rough handling. He tried again, then again, and finally tore at the laces and the boots slid off; a spray of dusty sand exploded from them when they hit the wall. They flopped to the ground, the sand settling along with the echo of Damian’s roar.

He stood panting, his chest expanding in heaving gasps; he snatched up the boots and hurled them against the wall a second time. He hunched over, sucking in air with an ache like drowning in his ribs, and then drew in a long, chattering breath over a trembling jaw until his lungs protested. He let it out, slow and hissing through clenched teeth.

Damian picked up the boots and set them in a neat line near the door.

When he emerged into the cool, brightly lit kitchen, Father was on the phone and leaning heavily on a counter. The brief moment Richard spared to meet Damian’s eyes was full of concern, his brother’s brow creased with worry and exhaustion, and a wordless question. It was a mild balm and Damian nodded to it.

“…no, it’s been…uh….”

“Eighteen hours,” Selina supplied.

“Eighteen hours,” Father said into the phone, making a vague gesture toward Richard with his hand. “I don’t know, we just got back.”

Richard unclasped a medical kit he’d already put on the counter, grabbed a thermometer, and snagged a stool from the kitchen bar. He shoved them both toward Father, who shook his head at the stool and jammed the thermometer under his tongue.

“Wait,” Father said into the phone, mumbling around the glass. “Yes, it’s the old kind. No. I know.”

“It’s not going to work if you—” Richard began to say.

Father’s expression was one of profound annoyance and Damian guessed he was hearing the same thing from Pennyworth on the phone. Damian stepped forward and held his hand out, a sharp and flat movement with his palm. He jostled it when Father didn’t react. Blue eyes, clouded with pain and fever and exhaustion, regarded him for a moment and then the phone was set in his hand.

“Pennyworth, it’s Damian. Father won’t sit down.”

“Hello, Master Damian. Please tell your father if he loses consciousness, I will be advising Master Dick to take him to an emergency department.” Pennyworth’s voice was a calm wind, settling Damian more than he wanted to admit.

“Pennyworth says if you don’t sit down, you’re going to the hospital,” Damian said archly, ignoring Pennyworth’s slight noise of correction in his ear. Father’s brow creased in suspicion, but he slowly sat down on the stool. He held his hand out for the phone, much like Damian had, clearly regretting his quick decision to give it up. Damian took a step back.

“Perhaps it would be wise to switch to speakerphone,” Pennyworth said, with just enough steel in his words that Damian didn’t feel like arguing. Damian switched the phone mode and set it on the counter, inches out of Father’s reach, next to the medical kit.

“One hundred and one point eight, Al,” Father reported hoarsely, studying the thermometer. Richard took it from him to confirm for himself and there was a brief silence on the phone.

“Alfred?” Richard prompted.

“A moment, please, if you don’t mind,” Pennyworth answered quietly. “I suppose none of you have slept?”

“No,” Father and Richard and Selina all answered at once. Damian was excluded from the look that went between Selina and Richard, though he saw it; Father closed his eyes.

There was a short sigh over the phone. “Very well, then. You have the antibiotics? Double the initial dosage. I assume it still requires suturing?”

“Yes,” Richard said tightly. “Somebody wouldn’t stop for more than a field dressing. It’s still wrapped right now.”

“We were in a damn desert, Dick,” Father snapped. Or, rather, based on his countenance, he was trying to be sharp and instead the words came out sluggish. Damian inched forward, frowning at the way Father was swaying on the stool.

“Then clean and suture and cover it; use a local, but avoid anything else unless absolutely necessary or if the temperature climbs over one hundred and three. Otherwise, let the fever work. Motrin if it cannot be avoided.”

“I’ll manage,” Father said tersely. “Thank you, Alfred.”

“You know the symptoms of blood poisoning, Master Dick?”

“I do,” Richard said.

“Me too,” Selina said.

“If any of the secondary stages present, call me immediately,” Alfred said. “I’m rather sorry I didn’t accompany you. There is, if you’d consider it an alternative to the local hospital, the Tower?”

“I…don’t think that’s an option right now,” Father said.

“Would you feel better if we went, Alfred?” Richard asked, his posture and words hard, in defiance of Father’s frown.

“Hm. Not unless things worsen. I’m sorry, Master Dick. I’m merely frustrated that I’m here and not there. This is far from the worst we’ve seen. You will ring if things change?”

“I will,” Richard said. “Thanks.”

“Let me talk to him,” Father said, reaching toward the phone and wincing, before the call was disconnected. Damian picked it up, switching the talk mode, before pressing it into Father’s hand. His desire to help Richard resist Father’s somewhat questionable decision-making was wearing down, under his own tiredness and how little he liked to see Father’s hands shake.

Damian watched, fingers picking at a loose string near his pants’ front pocket, while Father had a very quiet conversation with Pennyworth. Barely a flicker of facial expression gave anything away, but Pennyworth was doing most of the speaking. Finally, Father nodded and grunted, and hung up.

There was already a substantial array of wound-care supplies spread across the counter; Richard was working quickly, prepping packages and running hot water into a bowl.

“You need to shower,” he told Father, while he tested the water with the inside of his wrist. “But I want to clean this up first so I’m not worried about blood loss. Are you dizzy?”

“Yes,” Damian answered for him.

Father didn’t correct him.

“Damian, get that blanket out of the way before I trip on it,” Richard said, pointing with a tilt of his chin toward the discarded emergency blanket lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. Damian snatched it and balled it up, shoving it onto a counter.

“Dick.” The mere rasp of a syllable from Father’s throat got Richard to move faster than Damian had seen in days, maybe weeks. He caught Father, forearm clasped against forearm, to steady him.

“B?” Richard asked. “You good to lean on the counter if I slide the stool?”

In response, Father merely nodded. He used Richard’s grip as leverage to stand and Richard dragged the stool with the crook of his ankle. A moment later, Father was sitting again, this time with a hand braced against the lip of granite counter. At least there, his hand wasn’t shaking as much.

The thin khaki jacket came off, then the top half of the suit with the Bat symbol, then the silky and skin-tight baselayer. All of them had matching holes drenched with blood in varying degrees of dryness, but they’d all been pulled over the gauze and tape of a field dressing. It was russet red, tinged with rust, darkest and wet in the middle. The kitchen light glistened off it with an ugly shine.

“Ready?” Richard asked, fingers poised at the edge of the curling tape holding the dressing in place. “It might bleed more when I pull this off. It doesn’t look like it’s gonna stick, though.”

With a flick of his fingers, Richard pried the tape loose at one corner and began working it away. Flecks of dried blood drifted, sticky and heavy, to the floor. The soaked gauze joined them on the tiles a moment later. The ragged gash where the sword had gone in was swollen, bright red and still seeping crimson.

A hiss escaped Father when Richard began wiping the skin with a moistened towel but Richard didn’t stop. He prodded with two wrapped fingers at the edges, frowning. “How deep is this, exactly?”

“She stabbed me, Dick. With a sword,” Father ground out. Damian thought if his knuckles got any whiter on the countertop, the granite beneath them would crack.

“How much blood do you think you’ve lost?” Richard asked, prodding now at the other side. The towel was already running out of unstained parts with which to clean. A thin trickle cut down across the scrubbed flesh and a corner of the towel drank that in, too.

“Bone…stopped it,” Father said. “The blade. Might have…nicked a rib. Definitely scapula. Maybe…two pints?”

“This is gonna leave an ugly scar. I think I should ice it while the local sets in, try to get the swelling down.” The towel joined the gauze on the floor and Richard was shaking a bottle of some kind of antibacterial fluid.

Damian saw it before Richard did, focused as he was on the wound itself. Father’s grip slackened, color rushing back into his hand, and a second later he was tipping. Damian leapt, wedging a shoulder under ribs, and the bottle sprayed recklessly and uselessly into the air as Richard grabbed, too, with it still in his grip.

Between the two of them, they kept Father upright on the stool, and being jostled was enough to pull him back into consciousness. Father blinked slowly while Damian twisted his neck to look up at his face and something about the blankness there frightened him; it was a distant, hazy gleam, so unlike Father’s sharp attention that Damian had to swallow hard to clamp down his roiling worry.

“B?” Richard said, quiet and soft. Perhaps he’d seen it too, then, as he slipped around to assess him directly.

“M’awake,” Father said.

“Let’s forget showering,” Richard said, tossing the bottle on the counter. Damian was still standing with his back bent, supporting a fair amount of Father’s weight, and Richard made a vague gesture that Damian interpreted without a second’s thought. They switched places and Richard all but forced Father to his feet. “I can stitch even better if you’re lying down.”

Father had, aside from the confused moments when they’d arrived at the Jeep, been fairly coherent and present for all the interactions over the past day. But even if he was awake now, it seemed like passing out had drained him. He was standing, but just barely, and it was clear from the way they were both moving that Richard was the one keeping him that way.

“Go find the nearest bedroom, strip the bed to the fitted sheet,” Richard said, and Damian froze at the way he was ordering Selina around. Then he glanced over his shoulder. Selina wasn’t there. He wasn’t sure when she’d left but she was nowhere in sight and he spun to see Richard staring at him with a raised eyebrow. “Damian. C’mon, kiddo. Move.”

Richard was ordering _him_ around. Damian went. There was an master suite not far from the kitchen, on the ground floor, and tossing aside the thick bedding was the work of mere seconds. The only cover remaining was the pale violet sheet when Richard hauled Father, limping, into the room.

The mattress sagged under the weight when Father all but collapsed across it on his stomach, a guttural groan escaping him when Richard moved his arm. He was pale and breathing fast, too fast, Damian thought. He was suddenly furious at Pennyworth for leaving them here, like this, instead of somewhere…else. A hospital. The tower. Anywhere. It infuriated him how calm Richard now seemed, after his own anger earlier. When Richard spoke, it was gentle.

“Bruce? You still awake? I’m going to give you the local. Damian, go grab the antibiotic and some saline.”

When Damian returned with the bags and tubes in-hand, Richard was holding an instant ice pack wrapped in another towel over the wound and checking Father’s pulse with his other hand. He still looked maddeningly placid, his continued chatter in a soothing tone that pricked at Damian’s brain as something once-heard and then forgotten. Then he placed it, as the way Richard had spoken to him when waiting for antitoxin to kick in, or the time he’d fallen ill at the penthouse.

“Hold this,” Richard said, motioning to the ice pack and taking the bags.

Damian sat on the edge of the bed and felt like an imbecile because he couldn’t think of anything to say. It didn’t really matter; Richard was still talking, Father’s fogged gaze following his movements while Richard prepped the IV supplies.

“…so I told Wally, that’s the last time we go for drinks in disguises, because I can only get thrown out of so many bars before—don’t move—the wig comes loose or something…”

Damian flipped the ice pack over and tried not to think, about the way Father flinched away from the motion, about the fact that the shaking had moved up Father’s arms and through the rest of him, about questions like _are you happy?_ and _what does it look like, anyway?_

“…and Wally said it wasn’t his fault we kept getting thrown out but if he would have just stopped challenging guys to drinking contests. I mean, he was doing it to get them to leave girls alone, and maybe I was egging him on a bit, but still, not _his_ fault? It’s probably been long enough, Damian.”

“I’ll do it,” Damian said roughly, snatching up the package of nylon gut before Richard could.

He was three stitches in when exhaustion was dragging his eyelids down and a pained whine from Father caused his hands to fumble. Richard transferred the materials to his own hands before Damian’s heart stopped thudding, and he nudged him with an elbow.

“I’ve got it,” he said, warm and reassuring. “Go clean up and sleep.”

Damian stumbled three steps away from the bed before his lips were moving, trying to form a protest. Richard was acting like he was already gone though.

“B, I think your fever climbed a little. I’m going to check it again. This is almost closed up.”

Damian contemplated stubbornly staying there, watching just in case he was needed, but his stomach dropped and he fled the room.

He didn’t make it far before he nearly crashed into Selina. She had wadded up the bloodied trash on the floor and was checking cabinets in the kitchen, presumably for a bin. Her cheeks were tinged pink, her skin dry and windburnt. When Damian found the bin first and held it out to her, he saw that her eyes were reddened, like she’d been crying. It embarrassed him somehow and he flushed, feeling his ears grow hot, and he slammed the cabinet door a bit harder than necessary.

The splintering crack stopped him from storming out of the kitchen, too, without any clear idea where he would head. Selina was swearing under her breath and he peered back at the mug, broken into five or six pieces, on the kitchen floor. She was already pitching them into the trash bin by the time he knelt to help gather them. That’s when he saw her hand, held stiffly and covered with a now-filthy bandage.

“You should clean your hand,” Damian said. “Unless you think Father will still love you without it.”

The words fell out of him before he thought, and they left the taste of soured milk in his mouth. Selina didn’t look hurt, but she did look surprised, and Damian thought her expression must mirror his own.

“I didn’t…” he began to stammer. He ducked his head and snapped his mouth shut. The next words took effort, forced out by the voice in his head that sounded a lot like a disappointed Richard. It wasn’t quite an apology. “I can help you. How did it happen?”

“Your mom’s sword,” Selina said dryly. “It’s okay. It’s been a long day. I’d appreciate some help.”

Damian twisted the knobs of the sink faucet and held a finger under the water until he judged it to be a good temperature. Selina held her hand under it and worked the bandage off herself, wincing and swearing once or twice as she did so. The cut was long but shallow enough and Damian cleaned it while they stood there.

“Glue,” he decided, holding her hand up to examine it more closely.

“Butterflies,” she countered. “The glue would just come off.”

“Tt,” he said, rifling through the supplies Richard had dumped on the counter and then shoved aside, deemed unworthy of being sorted. He found a few packages of butterfly bandages—Pennyworth’s medical kits always were thorough, at least— and began peeling them open. He affixed his attention and the first bandage across Selina’s palm, not looking at her when he spoke again.

“Why were you crying? If it upsets you this much to see Father injured—” _coward, coward,_ his mind chanted at him, because he’d abandoned Richard when he’d left the bedroom, “—then I have concerns about his relationship with you. And don’t,” his gaze flicked up to hers now, holding it with a stony cold, “tell me that it’s none of my concern.”

“Well, aren’t you a regular little Alfred,” Selina said, as if amused. His ire was rising when she sobered and sighed. “Of course it’s your concern. But no, that’s not why. Bruce and I have been through…a lot together. It bothers me but, no. It’s just that I’m a selfish bitch and I tried to save a friend and it didn’t work out. You know how sometimes people get what they deserve?”

Damian nodded.

“Yeah. Sometimes it sucks. If it makes you feel any better, your mom was trying to protect someone. She just…had the wrong idea about me.”

“Don’t worry,” Damian said bitterly, a blade twisting in his own chest. Or the ghost of one, maybe. “I doubt she lacked a selfish motivation.”

The drip-drip of the faucet, not shut off properly, filled the room. Damian wrapped a clean layer of gauze around Selina’s hand over the bandages. She cleared her throat, a small noise. It did remind him, annoyingly enough, of a cat.

“I’m starting to think I misunderstood your opinion of her,” Selina said.

“I don’t want a new mother, if that’s what you’re asking,” Damian snarled, hurling the bandage wrappers into the waste bin. He didn’t know why his chest was heaving all of a sudden, why it felt hard to breathe. He stood with his back to Selina, like a cornered animal unwilling to face its fate. “I’ve had enough of mothers, I think. But if you make Father…happy…”

Exhaustion had to be the reason his throat was dry like the desert they’d traveled through.

“It’s not just me,” Selina said, softly. “He’s happy with you. It used to be easier for him, with Dick. With Jason, before…he’s just, I don’t know…afraid to see it now. Afraid to admit it. But I think I can help him with that.”

“Is he just a project to you, then?” Damian demanded, wrenching the faucet knob. It stopped dripping. He got another mug out to replace the broken one and then stood holding it when he realized he didn’t know what it was supposed to be for, or who.

“No,” Selina said, not cruel and sharp but not soft and yielding, either. It was firm. “I think he can help me see it again, too. Like I said, I’m pretty selfish.”

“What was this for?” Damian asked, with a tongue that felt thick and stupid. It was easier to focus on the mug. He thought he could sleep for a hundred years.

“I’m going to make tea,” Selina said, taking it from his tightly curled finger, “and then send Dick to get some rest.”

“You didn’t kill those two hundred and thirty seven people, did you,” Damian said, and he wasn’t asking. She tore plastic packaging off an unopened box of tea, heated water in the microwave, and dipped the tea bag into the steaming mug, all without speaking, and Damian’s eyes never left her back.

“No,” she said finally.

“But you said you did,” Damian replied, frowning. “You were going to die because of it.”

“I did say that I did.” Selina was very, very quiet now, and barely moving; two fingers pinched the paper tag on a tea bag and moved it up and down in the water. “And your dad is the only one who didn’t believe me.”

“Why?”

“Damian, it’s been a really long week,” Selina said, and she was so tense he could feel himself being shut out, but she didn't seem angry. “I don’t know. I think I felt responsible but I’m not sure right now, if you want me to be honest. I’m trying not to think about it.”

“I don’t think you’re as selfish as you say.” Damian didn't intend for it to sound like an accusation but he knew it did anyway, all barbed and jolting as it flew across the room.

Selina left the tea bag leaking on the edge of the sink, slumped over and soaked and used up. She glanced at him with something like weary amusement.

“Are you trying to make me feel better?”

“You wanted to save the horses,” Damian said, stammering. He must be tired, that’s all it was. He hadn't slept in so long. He suddenly remembered his daypack with his iPod was in the other Jeep, free of any identification but still out there. “You didn’t stop me.”

“Yeah,” Selina said, hiding her lips with a sip of the tea. Her eyes looked sad though, and there was a crease in her brow. “Like I said. Selfish.”

She walked past him and down the hall toward the master suite. Damian stared after her for a moment, then shook his groggy head and went to find a bed. He made it as far as a couch in the recessed living room before he gave up, toppled downward onto linen cushions, and slept.

* * *

Dull sunlight streamed through the shuttered windows when Damian woke, stiff and creaking. His clothes felt rough and he didn’t move for several moments while he sorted out where he was and assessed his surroundings. It was quiet in the house, in a hushed way.

He sat up and rubbed at his eyes, wondering how long he’d slept. Voices drifted down into the living room and he wandered toward them on instinct, feet padding soundlessly on the marble floor of the hall. It was cold against his soles. The master suite door was cracked open.

Damian didn’t hesitate to lean his forehead against the doorframe and eavesdrop.

“…another day. You’re in no shape to travel.”

“I’ll be fine.” Father sounded groggy, and he was still on his stomach, like it had been only minutes since Damian had left the room. It felt like it had probably been much longer.

“You’re still running a fever,” Selina answered. She was sitting up on the bed, leaning back against the headboard. “Don’t make that face at me. Gotham isn’t going to go up in flames if we wait just one more day.”

There was an unintelligible word and a hoarse noise, which Damian recognized seconds later as laughter.

Selina lightly whacked Father’s good arm with the back of her hand. “That wasn’t funny,” she said. “God, you have an awful sense of humor.”

“Sans farine,” he murmured.

“Don’t be so morbid,” she scolded, and Damian felt like they’d leapt a ravine he couldn’t follow them over. He had no idea what this meant, only that Selina had gone from half-laughing to very serious in an instant.

“Sorry,” Father mumbled. “Wasn’t thinking.”

“Clearly,” she said, the word etched out like metal cut with acid.

Damian breathed in and out, long and slow and silent. His sense of intrusion was failing to win out against his desire to belong in whatever moment was happening, inside of Father’s life and not left on the fringe of it. He knew it was childish and wrong to stand listening and not let them know he was there, or to simply move away. He did neither.

“Holly?” Father asked, beginning to sit up. Selina gently shoved him back down.

“Don’t be stupid. Rest. She’s…going to turn herself in.”

“We’ll fight the sentence,” Father said. “She doesn’t deserve it.”

“Oh, and she deserves life in that hellhole, instead?” Selina spat back. “I trained her, Bruce.”

“She decided, Selina. It was her choice.” Father sounded tired, more than earlier even, like discussing this was aging him more quickly.

“She wasn’t stable. And she’s still dangerous, but she was a good kid, once. It’s hard to not see that still when I look at her.”

“She was going to let you _die_ , Selina,” Father said, voice scraping like rocks on the bottom of a barrel. “Forgive me if I’m not quite ready to forget that. She deserves a second chance but not at the cost of your life.”

“I know, I know,” Selina covered her face with both hands and sighed. “I got to that point all on my own, Bat. Maybe I’ll just break her out in a few months, let her run.”

There was a long, full silence, and then she nudged him with an elbow.

“What? No ‘Cat, you can’t?’”

Father shifted and groaned and then rolled his shoulder, just a little, with a pained hiss. Still, he said nothing. Then he folded his good arm under his head, pillowing it. He was looking at Selina.

“Don’t make me condemn myself. You know I can’t—won’t— take Jason in.”

“That’s a little different,” Selina scoffed, like a laugh and a sob at once.

“Not really. Not much.”

“She won’t kill anyone else, you know. It was just…”

“I won’t stop you,” Father said, following it with another soft groan. “Let her confess, then let her run. If she was going to keep it up, she would have already.”

“I don’t deserve you, Bat,” Selina said, leaning over and kissing his head. “I think you’re due for pain meds.”

“No,” Father answered. “I’ll just sleep.”

Selina opened her mouth to protest, but she looked up at the same instant and her eyes met Damian’s through the cracked door. He reeled back as if bitten by a snake and stumbled into Richard.

“Woah, slow down,” Richard caught him around the shoulders with an arm and Damian wrenched away and stalked down the hall. He dug into his pockets hunting for his earbuds, a signal to Richard that he didn’t want to talk (Richard respected that boundary about half the time, which was better than not at all), and then remembered.

The Jeep.

He retreated to the living room instead and reclaimed the couch, curling up with his arms wrapped around his knees and half his face buried there. He glared at the rug and tried to radiate his distaste for discussion at the moment, even when Richard predictably trailed in after him and sat next to him on the couch.

“How long’ve you been awake?” Richard asked, with a yawn.

Damian spared him a glance, taking in Richard’s sleep-mussed hair and loose sweats. His tank top was barely even clothing anymore, it was so worn out.

“Not long,” he answered, grudgingly.

“I think we both slept for, like, twelve hours. I tried to wake you up to move to a bed but I couldn’t get you to do more than cuss at me.” Richard reached out and tousled his hair; Damian ducked sideways to get away from it, a small grin tugging at the corners of his mouth even in the midst of his irritation.

“I don’t remember that at all,” he said archly.

“Mhmm. In Arabic, too. I don’t have to be fluent to understand _that_ much.” Richard was entirely too self-satisfied, leaning back on the couch and stretching his legs. He sprawled out easily, while Damian tried to push down a vague horrified panic at the idea of being so asleep he failed to register something as direct as speech and physical contact. But Richard broke through his rising self-rebuke, cutting it short. “You hungry?”

And then, just like that, Damian was ravenous. Perhaps he had been before and hadn’t noticed, curling vines of sleep still tangled in his mind and limbs, but those dried up and burned away like dust under a hot, windy sun. He nodded.

“There’s nothing here except canned and boxed stuff,” Richard said, poking repeatedly at Damian’s side. This was familiar, if childish, territory. Damian didn’t laugh, but Richard claimed he would make him do so one day. He wasn’t willing to admit how close Richard was getting.

“We could find koshary if we went out,” Damian said, edging away from the prodding finger. “I left my bag in the other Jeep. It has my clothes.”

“Then let’s go,” Richard said, rising and stretching. “We’ll just be gross for a bit longer. Bruce! You alive?”

A faint “hnn” carried through the house.

“Fevered?” Ricard yelled, leaping up all three steps out of the recessed living room in one stride.

“Not much,” Selina answered. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“Want food?” Richard disappeared around the corner and Damian went to find his boots.

An hour later, they were roaring down a deserted road toward where they’d left the other Jeep on the outskirts of Shiruta. There were discarded disposable bowls that had once held koshary, shoved into a paper bag by Damian’s feet. The late afternoon sun poured through the windows and Damian was grateful for both the A/C and the sunglasses he’d found in the glovebox. The radio was on, playing an Abdel Halim Hafez song that Damian couldn’t remember the name of; Richard was humming along and drumming his fingers on the wheel, a little off the meter, and Damian was fairly certain Richard had never even heard the song before.

“I’m sorry,” Damian said, because for some reason it was always easier to say those words to Richard. “That I made Father walk yesterday.”

He wasn’t exactly. Or he was, and he wasn’t. He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t mad that he’d saved the horses, or given them better odds. But he was…frustrated, or perhaps ashamed, that Father had paid the steeper price for his moral code. It had possibly been unjust of him to ask others to bear that and at the time, he’d told himself he was okay with Richard’s anger.

Now that Richard wasn’t acting angry, Damian found that wasn’t the case at all.

Richard stopped humming and his fingers stilled on the wheel.

“Bruce is the adult, Damian. He decided for himself.”

“You know it was because I insisted,” Damian said, frowning.

“When has he ever had a problem telling you no, when he wanted to?” Richard challenged, not unkindly. “I was worried as hell, but he decided. We all made it back. Bruce’s decisions tend to work out that way.”

“So, you think he wanted to stop riding? Or it was for Selina?” Damian’s confusion deepened by the second and now that he was alone with Richard, the questions poured out. “Was he concerned for the horses?”

“I think,” Richard said, reaching over and tugging the sunglasses down Damian’s nose so he could see his eyes. He kept sneaking glances at the road, but looking mostly at Damian. “I think he wanted to make you happy, kiddo.”

There was that word again.

Damian jammed the sunglasses back up and looked at the window at the passing landscape. Richard, by either decision to let it lie or belief that the conversation had been resolved, turned the music back up. It was another song, but he drummed his fingers and hummed along just like he knew this one, too. The tension leaked out of Damian slowly, his head dropped against the warm window.

Outside, a landscape of rocky sand and hills of boulders passed by. The sparkling coast caught the sunlight, and threw bright and clear white across the road. Damian felt himself settling into something like peace, like internal order, for the first time in…days? Weeks? Months? So much had changed recently, with Tim being gone, with Jon’s friendship, Dick’s move to ‘haven. Damian couldn’t pinpoint the moment it began to feel like he was sprinting all the time again, but he’d found himself there again after tasting what slow calm could be.

He missed it.

Then, he lifted his head and asked, “Who’s Holly?” and Richard’s entire body lit up with a jolt of discovery, or realization. It was electric, the way he straightened and went taut like a crackling livewire. As soon as it coursed through him, he slumped, casual and slack in the driver’s seat again. If Damian had blinked, he would have missed it; if he hadn’t known Richard as well as he did, he might not have noticed at all.

“So, that’s who they were looking for. She’s a, uh, friend of Selina’s. I think they grew up together, but Holly’s a bit younger. What did they tell you?”

Richard’s question was an easy out and Damian knew it was being offered freely. Years ago, perhaps, he would have regarded this with suspicion, like a test. Now he could see it for what it was: mercy. Ironically, it made him less willing to seize it.

“I overheard some things,” Damian said. The hills outside the window were mountainous, now, rising into craggier cliffs but also receding from the road. They were further back, and closer together.

Richard didn’t rebuke him for eavesdropping. His grip shifted on the wheel and he asked, with hesitance, “Did they…say _why_ she was in Khadym?”

The road curved away from the setting sun, down a slope into a dry valley. They left the vegetation of palm trees and low shrubs behind, until all that surrounded them was towering stone yellowed with sand and smoothed by wind.

“It wasn’t Selina. The murders.”

“Oh,” Richard said, blanching. The Jeep skidded to an abrupt stop, throwing Damian against his seat belt with a jolt. _“Oh.”_

Richard crossed his arms on the steering wheel and pressed his forehead against them, and exhaled so long that it made Damian’s lungs ache to hear it.

“Richard?”

“I owe Jason a huge apology,” Richard said under his breath. “Thank _god_. I didn’t think she’d…I hoped she hadn’t, and I wasn’t going to try to talk B out of it when he seemed to have an idea…of…shit. _Shit._ I had no idea how we were going to handle that.”

Damian’s eyes widened. “You didn’t come for me. You came to make sure he was coming home.”

“That _is_ coming for you,” Richard said sternly. Damian didn’t hear that authoritative tone from him very often anymore. “Making sure he came home was absolutely for you.”

“I could have done that on my own,” Damian snapped. “You didn’t have to stay.”

“He’s not just _your_ father,” Richard said, deep and glacial. The look he fixed on Damian was like being plunged into Arctic waters, and when Damian held his tongue in startled silence, it thawed and Richard simply looked tired. His tone gentled immensely. “I’m sorry, Damian. Of course I stayed for you. But it was for Bruce, too.”

“Did you think he would have stayed?” Damian ran a finger along the groove of the door against the window.

“Away from Gotham? No. But I was starting to think he’d either die out here or come home just to watch her die. Now I don’t know what’s going to happen. I guess he’s getting married.”

“It’s weird,” Damian said, with a disgusted sniff.

“It’s weird,” Richard confirmed. “But somehow, not surprising. It’s not like it’s the first time he’s tried. And Selina’s always sort of stuck around. How are you doing? With…this.”

“I don’t hate her,” Damian admitted softly. “I thought I would, now.”

“That’s okay,” Richard said, squeezing his shoulder. The Jeep began moving forward again, down another slope. “And if you need to come stay with me, sometimes, if it’s just…too weird, you can.”

“What if it’s not?” Damian crossed his arms, his shoulders curved in. The car mats on the floor were the most interesting thing in the world and he counted the rubber ribs in the non-slick surface. “What if I like it, but…I…and you…”

His palms were sweating, his words broken. Richard’s laugh and the hand clapping against the back of his neck were the release on the carabiner clips weighing him down. The weight and nervousness flew off him in a breath.

“You can just come over, D. I miss you, too. You don’t need a crisis to come visit.”

“Good,” Damian said, shooting his brother a small but grateful smile.

The desert they’d emerged from hours before spread out before them, along the southern side of the overhang where the second Jeep was waiting. It was golden in the light of the setting sun, warm beneath the bold teal of the darkening sky. A few bright stars were flickering and Damian soaked it in. For all its barren deadliness, it wrapped around him with a haunting beauty and he loved it, loved it for what it was and how it stirred something in him. He wished he had his sketchbook, but also he thought of Tim, and he wished he had him there with one of the cameras Damian could never manage to work as well as Tim did.

Damian could take evidence photos but Tim could capture _art_ , could snatch this landscape and all its wonder up in a way Damian couldn’t manage with film. His throat tightened and he didn’t resent it; it might have been one of the first times he’d _missed_ Tim in a way that wasn’t soured by guilt or bitterness.

“Do you want to talk? About her?” Richard asked, turning off the Jeep. They were in the shadows of the rock.

Damian blinked and realized Richard had made the natural assumption he’d been staring that way, thinking of Khadym.

“I don’t want to talk about Talia,” Damian murmured, wiping his cheek with the back of his hand. He was surprised to find it dry. He tore his gaze from the desert and rubbed at the raised ridge of scar tissue over his sternum, easy to feel through his tee. He’d come back. Jason and Father had come back. Maybe…

The desert shimmered with dissipating heat that curled around him like an overwarm blanket, when he climbed out of the air conditioned Jeep. It was insane, it was _insanity_ , but he was looking forward to coming up with an excuse to come back here with Tim someday. Maybe if he said the photo would be for Pennyworth, or Richard, or Father. It felt in that moment more like something temporary, rather than final and ended. He savored the hope and refused to let himself chase it away, for once.

“We’ll be alright,” Damian said, opening the trunk of the other Jeep and digging his bag out of the paneled compartment. He’d have to see if the iPod had even survived the heat.

“I think so,” Richard said, with a smile. “Let me know if you need to talk, though. Wanna drive it? Or should we tow it?”

Damian slammed the trunk shut and shouldered his bag.

“We leave it,” he said. “For now.”

It would probably be stolen or ruined by weather, but he’d have to come back to find out.

“Okay,” Richard said with a shrug. “Let’s go.”

Damian’s iPod was miraculously still functioning, and he was relieved. It was the culmination of months of music selection, a sturdy older model. He plugged it into the Jeep stereo and didn’t flinch when Richard asked, abruptly, “Hey. Is that my old iPod?”

“It was until you died,” Damian said archly. “And now it’s mine.”

It had been a lifeline but Richard didn’t need to know that.

“Mhmm,” Richard said. “So, you’re gonna give it back now.”

“We can spar for it,” Damian said, finding a playlist. He knew they wouldn’t, though. Or rather, if they did: he would win.

“You’re pretty confident, Young Grasshopper.” Richard grinned. “Maybe it should be best out of three.”

“Only so I can tire you out,” Damian answered. He tapped the play button and ducked away from Richard’s knuckles digging into his scalp, with a strangled protest.

He glared at him out of habit, but the weightlessness of his heart was less like annoyance and more like relief. The drum beat of the song filled the Jeep and the tires ate up the road while Richard sang along, almost distractedly, like he couldn’t help it; the idea of going back to the house didn’t burn in Damian’s stomach like dread and he found he didn’t mind the idea of being there, the four of them together.

Richard was tapping on the steering wheel along with the drums, constantly in motion, and every time he hit the top of the wheel with the cymbal it was a half-beat off.

Damian ignored it, cranked up the music, and hummed.

* * *

Sleeping for twelve hours meant that after a shower and eating again, Damian still was far from ready to go to bed. There was a brief conversation about Richard and Damian going back early, and Selina and Father following later, but that was shot down as an idea even before Father’s fever spiked.

That was when Richard left Damian to his own devices, to monitor things and call Pennyworth while Selina took another turn sleeping. Damian left their movie paused and hunted in his bag for his smaller sketchbook. He spent half an hour texting Jon before the younger boy’s bedtime, and another twenty minutes after that before Lois must have actually confiscated the phone.

He was sketching when Richard came back to the living room, mumbled something about being out of danger zones and starting the movie again, and then fell asleep on the couch before Damian could find the remote.

He turned out the living room lights and moved to the kitchen counter. The sun was rising and after making sure the blinds were drawn in most of the main rooms, he left the ones in the kitchen and dining area open.

Selina was moving stiffly when she came to get water, her eyes alert and the rest of her slow and drenched in lingering sleep. There were bruises, the remnants of a fight, standing sickly yellow and green on her pale arms. She started a pot of coffee and poured a cup without speaking to him. She sat on a stool and leaned over the coffee like a man nursing a beer in one of those Westerns that Father and Pennyworth liked.

“Morning,” she said, the word clear and belying the body language full of sore muscles.

“Morning,” Damian returned, just as cleanly. He was trying to get the position of a shadow right, but the sunlight behind him was confusing his attempts. His pencil scratched against paper again and again.

“Your mom told me a story. About a sword and learning to walk,” Selina said without preamble. “Did they do that to you?”

Damian froze. Then he focused on the shadows again, turning in his seat to make use of the sun. He didn’t remember the sword, but it was a story that had been told to him so often that he had a memory of falling that couldn’t have been real. Probably wasn’t real. Unless, he supposed, it was.

“Yes.”

“Huh,” Selina said. “That sounds…unhealthy.”

“It kept us alive,” Damian retorted defensively, pricked by the knowledge that it…hadn’t kept him alive. Still, the lesson was deep in his bones, his blood. “The world is cruel. You fight or you die.”

“I told your dad the same thing years ago, right before I shoved him off a roof.” Selina smiled into her coffee. “Oh, I knew he had a grappling gun, don’t look so horrified. You just told me your mom gave a toddler a sword.”

“Fair,” Damian conceded, resisting his own smile. He finally got the shadow angled correctly. “Did he let it happen?”

“Bruce?” Selina asked. “Hmm. I think I caught him off-guard. It’s hard to tell.”

“Was it easier?” Damian asked, pausing in his work. He was gripped by a surge of curiosity, to know what this woman thought of his Father when all of his mother’s accounts were steeped in disdain or respect, depending on the circumstance. “To surprise him then, I mean.”

“Hm,” Selina curled both hands around the coffee mug and considered. “You know. I think it was harder? He didn’t trust me then, or not as much. He was always on the defensive.”

“Why now?” Damian didn’t feign shyness. He stared at her, hawkishly watching her reaction. If he was going to be childish and ask questions, he was going to take in the full answer. He didn’t think he needed to clarify what he was asking about.

“He didn’t ask before,” Selina shrugged. “I probably would have said no then, anyway.”

“Why do you think he asked?” Damian demanded next. His gut knotted with the realization that this was sounding more and more like an interrogation, but he barreled forward anyway and didn’t retract the question.

“Me, or now?” Selina raised an eyebrow, a thin and sculpted arch. “The first: we understand each other. The second: I think he’s tired of losing people.”

Damian’s breath caught in his chest. He looked down, his face burning, even though he didn’t really think it was a rebuke. “Yes,” he said, with the immediate memory of watching Father stand in front of the row of graves at the Manor, hands in his coat pockets, scarf trailing in the strong wind. He tended to go out when the weather was most punishing; Damian had never been able to tell if it was for the assurance of solitude or the distraction of physical suffering. He’d never asked.

He set the pencil down on the counter and stretched his fingers. “Why are you telling me?”

“Instead of ignoring your questions, you mean?” Selina asked.

Damian nodded.

“Because you’re right. It is your concern,” she said, standing. “I ordered groceries. Will you and Dick be here for the delivery if I go for a walk?”

Damian picked up his pencil. “I’m not paying for it,” he said sharply, to hide how relieved he felt by the inclusion.

“I think the two of you can figure something out,” she said. “You could lift Bruce’s wallet pretty easily right now.”

Selina left through the balcony doors before he could decide if he wanted to retort or not. He left his sketch sitting on the counter and then poured himself a cup of coffee. When the doorbell rang, Richard was still sleeping, so he answered intending to ask the delivery boy to wait, only to find that the groceries were already paid for in full.

The lower half of the sun was just kissing the horizon farewell when he sat on the balcony with an orange, his fingers prying long, curling peels away from the white pith. A noise caught his attention and he glanced in through the glass, to see if Richard had roused at a whiff of the strong coffee.

Instead, it was Father. He was shuffling one foot forward at a time, leaning on the hallway wall for balance. Damian rose to his feet and left the orange on the balcony balustrade.

“Why are you up?” he asked, slipping inside.

“Morning to you, too,” Father grumbled, pausing to catch his breath.

Damian remembered how long it had taken to work the stiffness of traveling out of his muscles, and he’d been able to walk around right away. He felt a pang of sympathy and drew near enough to offer his shoulder.

“Hn. I’m fine,” Father said, but he hadn’t moved again since stopping.

“I’ll yell and wake Richard,” Damian threatened.

A hand fell heavy on his shoulder and he adjusted to keep his posture rigid.

“Damn tattletell,” Father muttered, with fond smirk down at him.

Damian smirked back. “Where are we going?”

“Outside,” Father nodded toward the balcony, and winced when he moved his neck.

It was slow going and Damian bit back a sigh of relief when Father settled into a deck chair, stretching out with a grimace. He waited, for a moment, and then tried to think of what Richard or Pennyworth might do. Usually, if Father was hurt, care didn’t fall to him.

“Do you want…coffee? Or food?” Damian asked, skeptical of his own guesses. “Or, um…a blanket?”

The morning chill from the sea hadn’t quite burned away yet, and it was far warmer already than Gotham, but fevers could shift perception pretty uncomfortably, and it seemed like the sort of thing he remembered Pennyworth always having on hand.

“Yes,” Father answered.

Damian came back out balancing all three things in his arms. He shook the folds out of the blanket one-handed and then held it out and waited. When Father took it, he put in the effort to sit up and wrap it around himself instead of just spreading it out. The coffee mug was set on a broad arm of the chair, the orange given directly to Father.

His own orange was still on the balcony and he snatched it and then perched on the other arm of Father’s chair. Together, they peeled in silence, watching the crash of clear waves on the stony beach.

Rather, he peeled, and then noticed that Father had given up trying to do so one-handed and had closed his eyes. Damian swapped oranges with him without comment.

“I’ve spent a long time trying to protect myself,” Father said, in a way that held Damian’s heart and all the air on the balcony captive, waiting, and still. “And just as much time telling myself that what I wanted didn’t matter.”

“Tt,” Damian said, but it was hollow.

Father’s hand stopped him from working on the orange and drew his attention, pale blue eyes locked on dusky turquoise ones. Then Father looked away first, out at the sea.

“And it didn’t save me from losing others, from being hurt, anyway. I’ve been…fortunate, that some people haven’t given up on me when I was doing my damndest to make them. It’s how I survived.”

“Drake isn’t dead,” Damian said and Father’s small sigh sounded wistful.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Are you—”

“I’m going to find him,” Father said firmly. “But don’t wait until you’re as old as I am to stop being afraid of being happy.”

“I’m not afraid,” Damian said, acid on his tongue. It wasn’t the orange. The tang of citrus was sweet compared to that. “You aren’t.”

“I am. I have been,” Father said.

It was Father refusing to look at him that convinced him.

“Don’t miss it,” he said, when Damian was silent. “What you have, with Dick. With Jon. With anyone you find, or that finds you.”

“With you?” Damian interjected.

Father startled, just a slight jerk of the hand holding an orange slice. “With me,” he added thickly. “Don’t settle for your happiness being an accident, or someday you’ll wake up and regret it. You’ll hate yourself for how passive you were about the one thing that makes everything worth it.”

“Will marrying her change that? Will it make it easier?”

“Marrying Selina isn’t the only thing I need— I want— to change. But yes, I think it’ll help.”

“Tt,” Damian said again. He reached across and stole Father’s coffee, and shifted, so his perch on the arm of the chair had him leaning just a little on Father’s good shoulder.

“I’m going to try to set a better example,” Father said. “And I shouldn’t ask this, but I need you to tell me if I’m not doing my job.”

“Of course I will,” Damian said steadily, Richard’s words from long ago echoing in his head. “I’m your Robin, aren’t I?”

The smile that spread across Father’s face was quick and deep and real, weaving the worry lines near his eyes into unusual curves. It faded to a crooked grin and he looked up at Damian.

“I suppose you are, son,” he said. “And give me back my coffee.”

Damian surrendered the half-empty mug and wrapped his arms around his knees, studying the waves as they crashed on the beach.

“Thank you, for walking. For the horses,” Damian said.

“Hn,” Father said, his mouth full of coffee. “It was the right thing to do.”

“For the horses?” Damian prodded.

Father looked thoughtful for a moment. And then he finished the coffee, set the mug down, and wrapped an arm around Damian’s waist in a warm, loose hug. He left it there when Damian didn’t tug away. Damian started to think he wasn’t going to answer when Father said, firm and decisive:

“No.”

Damian didn’t need to ask what he meant.


End file.
